ALCIBIADES: No.

SOCRATES: Then how can they teach them?

ALCIBIADES: They cannot.

SOCRATES: Well, but do you imagine that the many would differ about the
nature of wood and stone? are they not agreed if you ask them what they
are? and do they not run to fetch the same thing, when they want a piece of
wood or a stone? And so in similar cases, which I suspect to be pretty
nearly all that you mean by speaking Greek.

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: These, as we were saying, are matters about which they are
agreed with one another and with themselves; both individuals and states
use the same words about them; they do not use some one word and some
another.

ALCIBIADES: They do not.

SOCRATES: Then they may be expected to be good teachers of these things?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if we want to instruct any one in them, we shall be right in
sending him to be taught by our friends the many?

ALCIBIADES: Very true.

SOCRATES: But if we wanted further to know not only which are men and
which are horses, but which men or horses have powers of running, would the
many still be able to inform us?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And you have a sufficient proof that they do not know these
things and are not the best teachers of them, inasmuch as they are never
agreed about them?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And suppose that we wanted to know not only what men are like,
but what healthy or diseased men are like--would the many be able to teach
us?

ALCIBIADES: They would not.

SOCRATES: And you would have a proof that they were bad teachers of these
matters, if you saw them at variance?

ALCIBIADES: I should.

SOCRATES: Well, but are the many agreed with themselves, or with one
another, about the justice or injustice of men and things?

ALCIBIADES: Assuredly not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: There is no subject about which they are more at variance?

ALCIBIADES: None.

SOCRATES: I do not suppose that you ever saw or heard of men quarrelling
over the principles of health and disease to such an extent as to go to war
and kill one another for the sake of them?

ALCIBIADES: No indeed.

SOCRATES: But of the quarrels about justice and injustice, even if you
have never seen them, you have certainly heard from many people, including
Homer; for you have heard of the Iliad and Odyssey?

ALCIBIADES: To be sure, Socrates.

SOCRATES: A difference of just and unjust is the argument of those poems?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: Which difference caused all the wars and deaths of Trojans and
Achaeans, and the deaths of the suitors of Penelope in their quarrel with
Odysseus.

ALCIBIADES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians and Boeotians fell at
Tanagra, and afterwards in the battle of Coronea, at which your father
Cleinias met his end, the question was one of justice--this was the sole
cause of the battles, and of their deaths.

ALCIBIADES: Very true.

SOCRATES: But can they be said to understand that about which they are
quarrelling to the death?

ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.

SOCRATES: And yet those whom you thus allow to be ignorant are the
teachers to whom you are appealing.



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